State Probers Visit Missing-child Charity

January 4, 1985|By Jenni Bergal, Staff Writer

Investigators from the Secretary of State`s Office paid surprise visits to six offices of the Bureau of Missing Children statewide Thursday, requesting all financial records from the Tampa-based charity as part of their probe of the group`s fund-raising activities.

``Everyone appeared to be cooperative,`` Shelley Bradshaw, director of the Secretary of State`s Division of Licensing, said Thursday afternoon. ``At this point, I don`t know very much. The investigators have to analyze what they saw and put it together.``

State investigators Paul White and Arthur Williams and Oakland Park Police Detective Glenn Osani went to the bureau`s Oakland Park office -- its only operation in Broward County -- at 10:35 a.m. Thursday, but obtained no financial records.

``I hold no records in this office. Everything is forwarded to Tampa,`` said Oakland Park office manager Vicki Vangerpen.

Investigators who went to the Miami office were given copies of financial and payroll records. According to those records, the Miami bureau received at least $76,927 during its first two months of operation.

The Bureau of Missing Children is a charity composed of private detectives that has collected at least $300,000 in donations through telephone solicitations in Florida in 1984, its first year of operations.

Bureau literature says hundreds of private detectives throughout the United States and abroad have donated time and services worth $1.3 million to locate missing children.

The bureau gives contributors letters thanking them for their ``tax- deductible donation,`` but the Internal Revenue Service has not granted tax-exempt status to the operation, meaning that those who donate can`t take the promised tax deduction, according to an IRS official.

The bureau is being investigated by several police agencies in the state, as well as the Secretary of State`s Licensing Office.

Secretary of State investigators and police found three telephone solicitors working Thursday at the Oakland Park office.

One employee told police that if anyone she calls asks about the bureau`s tax-exempt status, she has been told to say that all contributions are tax deductible.

``We have been told they have applied (for tax-exempt status), so we are tax exempt,`` she said.

Office manager Vangerpen told investigators she makes deposits from collections on Wednesdays and Fridays, and sends all financial records to the Tampa office. She estimated that her office collects about $400 to $500 a day in donations.

Police have been trying to discover how contributions to the bureau are being used if, as the organization contends, all its investigative services are donated by the private detectives.

According to police, the Tampa bureau`s financial statement as of Oct. 25 showed that the organization had received $291,272 statewide and spent all but $106 for salaries and other operating expenses.

Bureau president John M. Weaver has said much of the money collected ``pays administrative costs and pays the bureau employees` salaries,`` but could not specify how much goes where.

He has referred all financial questions to John Lewis Russell III, the bureau`s secretary-treasurer and executive director.

Russell has not returned telephone calls from the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel.

Vangerpen said when she joined the organization a few months ago, she was told that the investigators donate their time, but that the bureau pays for other expenses, such as telephone calls, travel costs and airfare for parents whose children have been located.

Police have not been able to determine how the organization has spent the money it has collected in Broward County.

Telephone solicitors in the Oakland Park office have been asking area businesses to buy ads in a 60- to 75-page abduction-prevention guide, which Vangerpen said will be published in February. On Thursday, investigators sifted through boxes of records, noting who had bought ads and how much each contributor paid.

When asked who will publish the guide, Vangerpen told authorities she didn`t know, but that she understood the bureau had its own printing press in Tampa.

Police also have been investigating the bureau`s claim to have located 31 missing children in its first year of operation. That claim cannot be substantiated because bureau officials will not disclose the children`s names.

The bureau was registered in February 1984 as a charity by the Secretary of State`s Office, which also is reponsible for licensing private investigators.

Russell is a private investigator who runs Russell & Associates in Tampa.

He and the bureau`s president, Weaver, both operate detective agencies that repossess cars for finance companies and banks.